All Things

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, November 20th, 2022:
The Solemnity of Christ the King

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Colossians
1:12-20


Brothers and sisters: Give thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. The Father has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 

Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers - all things have been created through him and for him. 

Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his Cross.

A glance, a smile, a hug

A thought, a prayer, a feeling

A flower, a tree, the rain

The wind, the cold, warm rays of sun

These are all things, visible and invisible. There are many more, the things that make up our reality. Good and bad. Beautiful and ugly. Painful and soothing. 

I consider the ways that the invisible impacts the visible. Carelessness affects the beauty of our environment. Self-absorption influences the quality of our relationships. The compulsion to help can change someone’s day. Or even their life. 

Even Christ is both visible and invisible, a piece of history and a universal presence, in the gift of His Body at Communion and the movement of His Spirit within us that manifests as an idea, a word, a gesture. 

Jesus is nothing but a gift. He is the power behind what makes our visible and tangible lives better, regardless of the circumstance, because the invisible matters, in some ways more than the visible.

I believe that one of the purposes of my art is to bring the invisible into our sight – the beauty of relationship, the memory of a touch, an embrace, an ongoing love. The ability and the desire to recreate these moments with pencil and paper is a gift that has been brought about for me through healing that Jesus has wrought. He has reconciled things in my life that I never thought it was possible to reconcile. 

Let my life confess that what Saint Paul writes here is true – Jesus Christ is King over ALL things. 

Visible and invisible.


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Lindsay Elford

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